by Jacquelyn Thayer “Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” was the quote that kept intruding upon me, quietly but insistently, while watching the debut of the Joffrey Ballet’s made-for-digital Boléro, a 16-minute piece choreographed by company artist Yoshihisa Arai and starring Anais Bueno, set to Maurice Ravel’s infamously repetitive composition. Not to…
by Jacquelyn Thayer There’s a form of lived choreography that any music lover will know intimately: you act on the rhythms of your personal soundtrack, attached to a playlist or the looped tunes in your own head. It informs the footsteps and fidgets, enhances triumph and trauma. It’s automatic. In Baby Driver, the trappings of…
Heather Ogden and McGee Maddox in The Four Temperaments (Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, courtesy of the National Ballet of Canada) by Jacquelyn Thayer Modes of modern form the surest throughline in the National Ballet of Canada’s mixed program featuring a pair of Balanchine classics and Alexander Ekman’s daring Cacti. While two pieces —…
